


hand holding

by softreminiscence



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 05:34:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5856136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softreminiscence/pseuds/softreminiscence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the one consistency in their lives had been clinging to each other's hands: throughout worry, throughout war, and now, throughout love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hand holding

“we should go ice skating, emil,” you say in the tiniest whisper as sweat rolls down your bare shoulders. emil is using the small towel as a barrier between the two of you in the small area of the sauna. it is much alike the other items that emil uses as barriers to separate himself from others when he is embarrassed. showing his body like this causes himself to flush, out only from the heat, even if he knows that you aren’t peering at his lithe frame, or the way that a bead of sweat moves down the side of his face. he knows your eyes aren’t flickering over to his lips to focus on how his breathing is slightly more ragged than usual and how his lips rest at a pout. 

 

his eyebrow quirks, but his expression remains largely unaffected; he licks his lips before he speaks. “ice skating?” he asks, then closes his eyes dreamily, sleepily. there seems to be words lingering on his lips, but he doesn’t let them drop. instead, he merely rolls his head to the side. 

 

“yeah, i think it could be tons of fun, em.” your voice is still quiet and you savor the silence of the sauna for another minute before you draw yourself off the bench and stretch languidly before wrapping the towel around your waist as you ready yourself to leave.

 

emil seems to stare straight through your skin and into your soul. you feel as though pieces of your skin have been peeled back for him, yet this is when he is easiest to read, to you. you nod and head out of the sauna, preparing yourself for the burst of cold air that will hit you as you head towards the shower room so that you may cool down. you linger in the hallroom and emil follows after you like a shadow or an apparition. “thanks,” he mutters when you set out all his clothes in a separate stall than him and you go to close yourself in yours. 

 

as soon as you are away from his peering eyes, you release the breath you had been holding and sigh as though you are exhaling a millenia of troubles that have accosted you. he makes you feel old, but perhaps that’s just the pull of sinew, of muscle, of bone, joints, tendons, of every fiber in your body bending to him and reforming into the child that once peered into his violet eyes as his tiny hands held yours and you two protected each other from the sounds of war, since you couldn’t protect each other from war itself. 

 

you sigh and it transplants you from the present to the past, but the past seems so much more painful than the promise of saunas, hot springs, licorice, and ice skating: of holding a hand that has stopped shaking and stills the tremor in your own hands. emil has kept his hand on yours throughout all the hardships in your life, so you find a solace with him. you can breathe with him. 

 

“tino?” you hear the soft lilt of his voice from the other side of your stall. “you okay? you haven’t started the water…” 

 

you move without thinking: nodding and twisting around to start the spray of startling cold water. the noise that slips from your mouth is a mix of anxiety, embarrassment, and shock from the cold of the water. “joo! I’m fine! just fine!” when you put your head under the water, you pretend that you no longer can hear anything other than the rush of it and that soothes you for the moment. you feel pacified as your nerves start to calm. 

when you step out, dressed, with your hair tousled, the corner of emil’s lips quirks imperceptibly as though he’s about to smile, but then he thinks better of that muscle movement. the smile on your face is almost natural by now. whenever you see emil or any of the other nordics, a smile lights up your face until your cheeks start to ache. “ready to go now?” he asks, and you notice how he moves without thinking and how he has to restrain his hand from reaching for yours. you feel brave, so you reach out and take his hand into yours and watch how his complexion starts changing to a splotchy red. 

 

“yeah,” you nod to him, squeezing his hand; your shoulder bumps into his, “let’s get to the rink!” 

 

when you move, you take care not to drag him along and instead let him follow alongside you. his feet seem to be made of lead though because it takes him too long to lift his feet from the floor and you briefly entertain the thought of the floor having some magnetic hold on him. he pulls off the floor and both of you stumble out into the darkening sky; the chill of winter hits your skin and both of you breathe the air in steadily. the cold tickles the back of your throat and when you look at him, there’s redness in his cheeks, but the cold must be getting to him already. he is smaller than you in a sense, so it’s logical that he’s more susceptible to the cold air: that is coils around him easier and seeps into his pores. 

 

the sky burns a deep pink that rivals emil’s cheeks. you feel an overwhelming warmth in the pit of your stomach that is unmistakingly because nature makes you think about the boy walking alongside you and strikes a match that lights a fire that makes the frigid air around you warm. if you shed your jacket, you are sure that you wouldn’t grow cold. 

 

“why…?” emil starts, but then immediately looks towards the floor as he seemingly struggles to finish his thought. when he does, his words are slow, “why… did you want to go with  _ me _ …? ice skating that is.” 

 

in response, you shrug. “i like spending time with you, emil!” you exclaim earnestly and lean into him as you flash a smile. “plus you deserve to have some type of relaxation when you come to visit. i bet you get real busy, especially if you are stuck spending time with lukas and mathias,” you chuckle. 

 

there is a hint of a smile on his face as he shrugs. “yeah…” 

 

you think the rest of the walk is going to pass by in silence. when he speaks, the wind almost steals his words away from your ears. “are you sure you are alright…? back in the showers…” you stop, turning to steal a glance at him. his face is masked in concern as his hand tightly sits in yours. you are strangely happy that you forwent gloves tonight. 

 

“yeah, yeah, em, i’m fine! i was just thinking about us…” you realize how that sounds too late, and when you try to eat your words, you end up biting your tongue. “about the past and when we were kids, y’know… i was thinking about...  this.” you tell him as you adjust your hand in his until your fingers are interlaced. something about the intimacy of this small gesture lights your nerves on fire and you are struck with the urge to kiss him here beneath the pink sky with its smattering of stars that rest in the sky and mirror the ones that are shimmering in his eyes. “how we would hold hands and it felt, to me, like i could conquer the world if i needed to…” your voice dips to a whisper as you stop walking. 

 

when your gaze drifts from his, he pulls you back with a look that you can’t read; there’s a panic there that you don’t recognize as you watch him close the gap between the two of you. you realize mere inches from him that it isn’t panic, but a sort of lovesick desperation that clings to every fiber of his being. his lips do not meet yours in the most elegant fashion nor do you respond gracefully, but it still knocks the air from your lungs and makes your knees weak. your legs tremble unsteadily and everything in the movies that ber likes to watch makes sense. you feel the way your heart beats sluggishly in your chest and how your blood rushes through your body until you feel as though all your blood is moving towards your head and making you dizzy with love. 

 

you are almost scared you will topple over when emil tilts his head, moving away from you, but then back in when you chase after him. his kisses are erratic, but his hands at the small of your back prove that he has control: that he is kissing you with patience and determination and love saturating his body, weighing it down until you both have become puddles of precipitation on the sidewalk. the ice rink is only a block away now, but your hands are tangling in the ends of his hair as you ground yourself in this moment and you savor every slow-passing second. you grip onto them until you feel as though you have manipulated time so that it moves for you: it stops for you.

 

you stay in this moment forever. 

 

forever ends up being minutes long and when he pulls away, his eyes are lidded and the expression reminds you of his brother; he looks so heavy with emotion. the redness of his face is splotchy and like an afterthought, he pulls his scarf up over his nose as to hide the blemish. your own face is warm and you feel as though you have just spent an afternoon with mathias drinking. all your bones are heavy, your mouth is dry, and your face is flushed. emotion pours out of you and you have to stop yourself from moving in for another kiss. 

 

“ice skating,” he mumbles. 

 

you take a minute to respond still, “yea…” you lick your lips, nod, and then take him by the hand. “ice skating…!” both of you head towards the rink while you think he might die from embarrassment as he follows behind you. the rest of the walk passes by in silence with the scuffing of shoes against the snowy pavement and cars moving past them to keep them company. 

 

as you hold the door open for him, you realize how odd it is for it to just be emil and tino together; both of you always had been on the cusp of two sides of the nordics, but now you were figuratively meeting in the middle. somehow, it feels  _ right _ . while you are lost in thought, slitted finnish comes from emil’s mouth and pulls the corners of his lips down as his brow furrows.

 

“kiitos,” you hear, and his voice sounds so small when he says it that you can’t help but smile. his innotations in finnish are always what you cling to; how he struggles with producing the words that he wants and how he almost avoids speaking to you in finnish and opts for english or danish or norwegian instead. the moments in your own tongue between them are rare, sometimes are just like the thank you in this moment. what is rarer is listening to his icelandic that slides of his tongue in perfectly considered phrases; you speaking icelandic feels light, but you avoid doing it because he thinks that his own language isn’t suiting. you believe differently, but hold those thoughts to yourself as you respond to him in finnish and enter the building after him. 

 

he looks awkward as he speaks in your language with a furrowed brow and an annoyed blush to the clerk so that the both of you can get skates. when he forgets the words that he’s looking for, you take over and there’s a brief look of relief on his face, but still with that hint of annoyance. you know that you should have let him prove himself: that he knows the language, that he is capable of doing things on his own, but you know that his finnish needs work and you don’t dare remind him of that time that he tried to impress you with his finnish only to order the waiter to give him something that was definitely absent from the menu. 

 

both of you know that you could easily just speak english, but there is something satisfying about speaking in one another’s languages or in your native tongue. you felt it when he had thanked you, and you feel it now as you finish the order for skates and begin taking off the very outermost layer of your clothing. emil follows your lead and as the skates are being passed to him, you put away your coats. even though it is inside, the rink is still cold, so you make sure to wrap yourself in a lighter coat before putting your skates on. 

 

emil is already wobbling unsteadily on them before you even have laced both of yours. he draws a laugh from you as he flounders for a grip to help him into a seat, but then just eventually collapses awkwardly next to you. his face is once again splotchy in embarrassment, but the annoyance is still plain on his face. life has always been a challenge for emil: even as an adult, lukas and mathias and berwarld all think of him as a child so he has to prove to them that he’s capable of being as strong as them. even if that strength is just in getting ice skates on; you think that he forgets that you’ve never really doubted any ounce of his strength of capability. his face is mere inches from yours and his hair cutely curls inward so the ends dance against his face. you lean in until your lips are just hovering his. this kiss does not take away your breath, but it lights up the synapses of your nerves as they all fire messages and responses that remind you that you are alive and  _ burning _ , shimmering, bright. 

 

you pull away to finish your shoes, then you lift up with little effort before offering a hand to emil. he accepts it to pull himself up from the seat and both of you head towards the rink. 

 

the people bustling around hardly seem to notice the both of you; there are children who are clinging to the sides of the rink nervously and others, the braver ones, who are creeping towards the middle with parents or older siblings close behind. you briefly stop to wonder if lukas had been the one to teach emil how to ice skate, or if it had been mathias. mathias can ice skate, but his legs are too sturdy so when he moves, it lacks grace and seems cumbersome, but with lukas: he’s all fluidity and gracefulness. he knows how to command attention wherever he goes. you hope that emil isn’t like either of them, but instead something of his own creation and practice on ice. 

 

when you step onto the ice, you push off towards the center effortlessly and start your glide around the rink, clockwise. it takes emil longer to push off and towards you; he seems to falter, stuck between moving away from the safety of the railing and staying close to you. his legs are shaking, but when he actually moves there is a grace in his movements that is impressive. you find yourself impressed by how easily he has gone from shaking knees to perfect posture. he notices that he’s impressed you and the smile that is on his face is lopsided, “didn’t expect that out of me?” he chuckles and then takes off at a lackadaisical pace that you quickly fall into stride with. he pivots on his heel and skates backwards, his expression is quiet yet somehow playful as his violet eyes watch you carefully. 

 

you laugh openly and chase after him, making sure to get close enough to reach out to him and take his hand; he spins around to face the same way as you and both of you glide around on the ice with puffs of air following after you as laughs escape from the both of you. there is no need for words between you as you skate around, twirl, and grasp onto one another in hopes that you both won’t topple over from dizziness: out of breath and stamina. crashing into him and forming a heap on the floor doesn’t sound like a bad idea, but you do recognize that it is an idea that should be saved for after the rink and not while within it. others freely skate alongside the both of you, faster than you, towards the middle of the rink, grasping onto the sides: desperately grappling for a hold, they mirror how you meet up with emil and your hands find what purchase they can and you threaten to pull him down then and there, but he holds you steady as you both stand breathlessly on the ice. 

 

both of you are sickeningly happy from adrenaline and love; his eyes are heavy and the laugh on his lips is a sound that you want to draw out for the rest of eternity. you never remember how elusive his laugh is until you hear it raw and unfiltered; the cold air causes his breath to fog when it comes out in puffs of excitement. his chest is heaving from the atmosphere, it is not unlike your own chest; you struggle to gather your composure again now that your cheeks are flushed from cold and happiness. you drink in the atmosphere: let your skin soak it up. your cheeks start to hurt: from the cold, from the way you can’t stop smiling when you are looking at emil and the way that he smiles lopsidedly so that it isn’t quite a beaming smile. 

 

his eyes glisten though and you know that if both of you were slightly more brave, you’d kiss him in the middle of the rink until both of you felt as though you were drowning. if you could, you would kiss the breath out of him, stealing every last breath from his pouty mouth until they were swollen and both of you were dizzy. 

 

the cacophony of your laughs subside finally and it is just the two of you standing in the middle of the rink.

 

your voice trembles, “olet elämäni rakkaus.” for once, your finnish rolls off your tongue awkwardly, and your hands move instinctively to cup his face. for a couple of seconds, you aren’t even sure that he’s heard you, or that your words were actually externally vocalized outside of your mind. the only indication that he’s heard you is the way that his face changes; his eyes flutter close as he leans into your touch and his mouth parts just slightly-- and  _ how badly you want to kiss him _ . it makes your knees shake until you think you are going to be pulling him down onto the surface of the ice with you. 

 

somehow you hold on and his voice is softer than yours, “ég elska þig,” he smiles softly, genuinely at you, but within the next moment his expression has changed to one of surprise as you let gravity take its hold on you. 

 

while emil is luckier than you, catching himself on hands and knees, your bottom smacks the ice and you feel the impact immediately. the momentary pain makes you groan. you want to rub at your skin, but you know better and when your eyes meet emil’s, both of you dissolve back into a fit of laughter. “...didn’t think weak in the knees meant literally…” he mumbled sheepishly, trying to hide his blush with an awkward placement of his hand on his face. 

 

your eyes are gentle as you watch him push himself off the ground and then reach down to help you up also. without hesitation, you let him help you, careful that you don’t end up pulling him down again. once both of you are standing, you take each other’s hands and support each other towards the edge of the rink to cling onto the rails. he looks pensive, as though he wants to say something, but that look dissipates as you stand with him in breathless silence: both of you calming down after the scene you had just caused. 

 

after your breath catches up with you, you turn your gaze back to emil and lean in close to him. “wanna get some hot chocolate?” you whisper, unnecessarily quiet in the moment. one corner of his lips quirks up and he nods as though it is the most ideal suggestion: as though he’s ready to hop out of his boots and off the unstable surface of the ice. once you have your answer, you tug him towards the exit and start to peel yourself out of your shoes. it doesn’t take long for both of you to have picked up your coats and returned your skates; as soon as you two are put back together, you head towards the concessions booth and order two hot chocolates. 

 

“this was nice,” you say. your voice is so soft now; everything about the night is soft and pliable. for the first time in a long time, you are enveloped in a happiness that makes the worry melt away. it feels as though the sun’s rays are reaching out and caressing your skin: you are safe in the haziness of the heat. it reminds you of a childhood wrapped in blankets next to the fireplace: hope resting in your fingertips and love in your heart. that’s how this moment is: hope is streaming through your nerves as you reach and hold onto emil’s sleeve, and love is seeping into your bloodstream as he takes a slow sip of his hot chocolate and pulls away with whipped cream on his nose; he’s looking at you with a quizzical kind of gaze that draws a warm laugh from the pit of your stomach. 

 

you lean in and wipe at his nose. “what…?” he starts to ask, but your sleeves are replaced with your lips as you place a fleeting kiss onto the tip of his nose. immediately, he wrinkles it in response and moves back. his drink sloshes out of the cup and streams down the side of it.

 

you chuckle, “you had cream on your nose.” 

 

now he’s an interesting shade of a reddish color; he tugs at his scarf with a hand in a halfhearted quest to cover up the bottom half of his face. “thanks…” he says, looking deep into his cup. 

 

in response, you just give a smile: it is an open, unguarded gesture, and he gives you a coy smile, still trying to bury himself in his scarf. soon, both of you return to your hot chocolate. 

 

when you take him back to your home, you make sure to leave burning kisses against his cold lips until both you see the northern lights behind your eyelids. you promise to try to make him breakfast in the morning, before his flight, but your heart aches as you turn over the prospect of asking him to sleep in your room and your hands won’t let go of his for fear of feeling the emptiness that being without him brings, but eventually he leans in to give you one last, fleeting kiss and then he pulls away completely. both of you are satiated because this kiss is  _ good night _ , it is  _ see you in the morning _ ,  _ i love you _ ,  _ take care. _

 

and most importantly, it’s not  _ goodbye _ . 


End file.
